My Top 10 Favorite New Features
Added Since Lightroom Beta 4

1 The ability to interactively adjust color areas within your photo
Adobe had sliders for adjusting the Hue, Saturation and Luminance in Lightroom for quite a while, but in Version 1.0 they added a Target Adjustment Tool to the HSL panel. The new tool enables you to leave the panel, go into your photo, click on the color you want to adjust, and drag up (or down) as the color sliders that control just those colors in your photo adjust as you drag. Try this once and you’ll never want to drag the sliders again.

2 New Options for the White Balance tool
They’ve added some handy new options which appear down in the Toolbar at the bottom of the Preview window. While it doesn’t really add new features to the tool, it does make using the tool easier. For example, there’s now an option called “Auto Dismiss” which enables you to have the tool immediately return to its home on the Toolbar as soon as you click it once in your photo. You can also turn this option off and keep clicking the tool as many times as you like. Technically, you could do this in Beta 4, but you had to hold down a keyboard shortcut to keep sampling different areas. In Version 1.0, this is much easier and more people will use it because it’s right there. Also, there’s a control for the size of the grid displayed in the Loupe, and you can even turn the Loupe on or off. These are little things, but with any great program, it’s all about the little things.

3 You can turn off the effect of most Develop panels with just one click
Basically, Adobe added an On/Off switch to most of the panels in the Develop module, so now you can instantly see a before/after of how the adjustments in that particular panel affect your photo. For example, if you want to see what your photo looks like without the changes you made in the Tone Curve, you can just toggle the Tone Curve off in the left side of the panel’s Titlebar.

4 New tools for removing Red Eye and Spots/Dust

The Red Eye tool works well, is easy to use, and gets the job done. The Spots/Dust tool isn’t the Healing Brush (and it’s a little clunky to use at first), but once you get the hang of it, it doesn’t do a bad job.

5 Virtual Copies: The Freedom to Experiment Without Adding File Size
I love that you can now make “Virtual Copies” of a photo, and although these Virtual Copies look, feel, and edit just like the original photo, they’re really just sets of instructions so they don’t take up any additional space on your hard disk. This way, you can have as many Virtual Copies as you like and keep multiple versions of your photo with different looks, without adding to your overhead. This is sweet!

6 Really Usable Flash Web Templates
Although Beta 4.1 had some Flash Templates built-in, the ones in Version 1.0 are much more usable, better designed, more varied, and best of all—they really work. The Web experience has been really upgraded to the point that I believe many professionals will switch to using these built-in templates for client proofing on the Web, rather than paying third party services.

7 Keeping Things Organized By Stacking Related Photos

The new ability to stack related photos together in the Library Grid and Filmstrip (and even to have Lightroom do this automatically based on the length of the time gap between when they were taken), is a huge step in the right direction. It will help photographers stay organized, and to not get overwhelmed when importing 700 or 800 photos from an event shoot.

8 The Keyword Stamper Tool

In my opinion, this is the way to apply Keywords after the import. It’s quick, it makes sense, it’s almost fun, and it makes applying multiple keywords really easy. I think the Keyword Stamper Tool is about the best thing to happen to keywords since Beta 1. Nicely done Adobe!

9 Filter by Metadata Browser
The ability to filter down your photos by their embedded metadata sounded like a thing I’d never use, until I actually tried it. Now I have to say—it totally rocks. I’m amazed at how many times I need to find a photo taken with a particular ISO, or with a particular camera make or model, and now I’m only one click away from just that. The usefulness of this feature really took me by surprise.

10 The Import Dialog is Finally “There!”

This might win my award for “most improved part” of Lightroom because I think the import dialog, and it’s streamlined features, are the best in the business. First, it now gives you a huge preview with resizable thumbnails. So now, not only can see you what’s on the card, but you can choose which photos actually get imported (and which get ignored). Also, the built-in File Naming is so much improved, this feature alone is worth the upgrade. The entire dialog now makes sense—it flows, it’s cut down my workload, and it makes the task of importing photos feel much less like a task because I know if I take advantage of it, it will save me time. It’s a huge improvement in ease-of-use of Beta 4.1.

So there you have it—my top 10 favorite improvements to Lightroom since Beta 4 was released to the public last year. A hearty congratulations to everyone on the Lightroom team, including Mark Hamburg, Thomas Knoll, and all the dedicated engineers who have put their heart and soul into this release, along with Lightroom superstars Jennifer Stern, Tom Hogatry, and George Jardine at Adobe. Also, kudos to people like Jeff Schewe, Andrew Rodney, Martin Evening, Katrin Eismann, Peter Krough, Michael Tapes, and Seth Resnick (among others), whose input and ideas are felt all throughout the application. Well done, lads (and Lassie!).